Winner

We would like to send a beautiful arrangement of gladioluses (the winning word from the first National Spelling Bee, in 1925) to Ananya Vinay for reaching the highest height in this year’s contest.

That, we think, would be a fitting guerdon (2008) for her achievement.

In fact, gladioluses all around for the winners from the last few years, the vast majority of whom have been — it’s impossible not to notice — Indian-American. What’s the secret of all the Desi youngsters who have now dominated the contest for 13 years running?

What explains this meticulosity (1950) with incredibly advanced language, especially in an age when spelling skills across the population appear to be deteriorating (1934)?

We ask this question not to indulge in deification (1978), but to engage in an act of simple appreciation for one immigrant community’s remarkable knack (1932) for teaching youngsters knowing how to spell incredibly difficult words.

Psychiatry (1948) cannot account for the phenomenon; Indian-American children have the same brain chemistry as their peers. Nor can we attribute the victories to the autochthonous (2004) traditions of the Indian subcontinent; those are far too diverse and complex.

Far likelier, it is because of the milieu (1985) in which children of Indian descent are raised in this country, with a reverence for a certain type of rigor that lends itself to learning word roots, prefixes and suffixes. Some kids are just conditioned, from a very young age, to elucubrate (1980) when other boys and girls would rather be insouciant (1951) about school.